The present invention relates to an electric medical apparatus, and more particularly to an electric medical apparatus which supplies a high-frequency electric current to a living tissue to use heat generated by the high-frequency electric current so as to treat the living tissue such that the mode is switched between, for example, incision and coagulation.
The electric medical apparatus supplies a high-frequency electric current to a living tissue to perform an incising treatment or a coagulating treatment or the like. The apparatus has been employed in a usual surgical operation. An apparatus is known among the electric medical apparatuses of a type which measures the impedance of a living tissue to control the output of the apparatus in accordance with a result of the measurement.
A technique has been disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,558,671 which measures a minimum value of the impedance of the organism to use a function of the minimum impedance to determine the impedance at a moment of time at which the coagulation of the organism is completed. In accordance with a load curve of the system, a control unit causes optimum electric power to be output. Thus, the coagulation operation of the electric medical apparatus can satisfactorily be performed.
If the output for performing the incising operation is first used to excise the living tissue which is performed by the electric medical apparatus, coagulation cannot sufficiently be completed to prevent bleeding.
The technique disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,558,671 enables an operator to perform another operation only when the operator switches the output switch to perform another operation after the coagulating treatment has automatically be completed. When an incising treatment is performed after the coagulating operation, the operator must perform the other burdensome operation.
A triple-pole probe serving as a forceps, which is capable of performing coagulating and incising operations, has been disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,269,780. The foregoing triple-pole probe must, however, perform a complicated operation because a selection switch provided for the probe must be operated to switch the electrode.